“QUEEN ELIZABETH’S PRAYER BOOK”: RICHARD DAY’S BOOKE OF CHRISTIAN PRAYER, WITH SPECTACULAR WOODCUT BORDERS ON EVERY PAGE, SOME AFTER DÜRER AND HOLBEIN

DAY, Richard, publisher. A Booke of Christian Prayer, Collected out of Ancient Writers, and Best Learned in Our Time, Worthy to be Read with an Earnest Mind of All Christians, in these Dangerous and Troubled Daies, that God for Christes Sake Will Yet Still be Mercifull unto Us. London: Richard Yardley and Peter Short for the Assignes of Richard Day, 1590. Octavo, 18th-century full red morocco, elaborately gilt-decorated spine (with crown and fish motif) and cover borders (with acorn motif), marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. Housed in a custom clamshell box.

The Ashburnham copy of a sixteenth-century edition of “Queen Elizabeth’s Prayer Book,” as this work has been popularly called, with full-page woodcut of Elizabeth kneeling before a prie-dieu on the verso of the title page and woodcut borders after 16th-century masters throughout, depicting a full range of Christian icons, in fine 18th-century morocco gilt. A favorite book of Dibdin who calls it “probably the most splendid example of ornamental printing which this country ever produced.” This, the last 16th century edition, and issued during Elizabeth’s reign, considered to be either the third or fourth edition overall.

“Centuries after England had had a Bible in the vulgar tongue, Henry VIII started work toward a prayer book in English by requesting the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cramner, to translate the litany and print it in his English edition of the Prymer…In 1549, two years after the boy king Edward VI mounted the throne, the first Book of Common Prayer was printed. Largely— perhaps wholly— the work of Cramner, who was a tranlator of genius, it established English once and for all as the language of the church service. This use of the common tongue encouraged longer Bible readings and enabled the whole congregation to united in common prayer… After Edward VI died, aged sixteen, his sister Mary swept all of his work away and for the five years of her reign did what rack and stake and ax could do to turn England back to the old faith…When Henry VIII’s third heir, Elizabeth, came to power, she picked her way between her brother’s reforms and her sister’s reaction… A year after her accession to the throne she published a new version of the prayer book… in which she kept the vernacular for the church service… but left out the strident war cries of reform…” (Hyatt Mayor, Queen Elizabeth’s Prayers).

With the restoration of the Book of Common Prayer came demand for new English primers, or books of devotion, which had long been popular in Europe as ordinary prayer books for the masses, to be used on a daily basis. In 1569 John Day printed the rare Christian Prayers and Meditations, reputedly designed for the private use of Queen Elizabeth, the only complete copy of which is now at Lambeth Palace. In 1578 Day issued another edition for popular consumption, which went through several editions. “Richard Day and [his son] John Day collaborated in the production of what are, in effect, Protestant books of hours that pay tribute throughout to Elizabeth as a Reformation queen. In an outstanding example of iconoclasm, Elizabeth receives the place of honor in collections of prayers comparable to the Horae, in which the blessed Virgin Mary once reigned supreme as Mother of God and Queen of Heaven” (King, Tudor Royal Iconography, 114).

“The illustrated Book of Christian Prayers was first put out in 1569, in quarto, but again, so altered as to be really a new publication, in 1578, 1581, 1590, and 1608. The earliest edition Dibdin declares to be ‘of the extremest rarity,’ as well he might, from not having had ‘the good fortune to meet with it’ and the search, which has often been instituted since, does not appear to have brought to light more than a single copy. Of the edition of 1578, there is a copy in the Bodleian, as well as in the British Museum; the later editions are not so uncommon…. [The rare first edition, printed in 1569] is almost as highly adorned, as the subsequent edition of 1578, though its woodcuts are not so varied, nor its inner border so beautiful… The history [of the first edition, the only copy known] is extremely interesting. It once belonged to Queen Elizabeth, as we are informed by a manuscript note in an ancient hand on the fly-leaf: ‘Queen Elizabeth her owne Prayer Booke.’ On this account, perhaps, it was, that the royal arms appear both on the reverse of the title page and at the end of the book. The queen herself, at her devotions, is on the reverse of a leaf following the titlepage. These three cuts are likewise colored. [This] was clearly not a common copy of that edition. For portions of it suit Elizabeth herself, and no one else. The Litany, as far as relates to the queen, is entirely in the first person, ‘to keep and strengthen me thy servant of this realm by thee ordained queen and governor,’ [as well as similar prayers]. Whilst, therefore, the rest of the impression was printed for the public generally, this particular book must have been prepared expressly for the queen. From the statements now made, as well as from the uniform occurrence of the print of Elizabeth at her devotion, we have good reason to infer that she directly authorized the publication under both its forms” (William Keatinge, Private Prayers, Put Forth by Authority During the Reign of Queen Elizabeth).

“Its beautiful decoration including woodcuts is unrivalled by any other prayer book of the age [referring to the 1569 printing]…Most of the prayers were taken from Henry Bull’s Christian Prayers and Holie Meditations (1568), however some are original. Although she may not have written them herself she would certainly have approved and used them. In one, she asks for the same wisdom as Solomon: ‘how much lesse shall I thy handmaide, being by kinde a weake woman, have sufficient abilitie to rule these thy kingdomes of England and Ireland, an innumerable and warlike nation.” (Lambeth Palace Library). In the 1578 and later editions, the prayer for the Queen differs in that it is in the third person.

“These were what one scholar has called ‘the only examples of Elizabethan prayer-books de luxe to appear in Elizabethan England.’ The woodcut illustration of Elizabeth at her devotions in both editions, and the provision of prayers for the Queen herself to say (in the 1569 version), helped secure it for a while the nick-name ‘Queen Elizabeth’s Prayer Book.’ The book was heavily decorated with borders and figures and included a medieval ‘dance of death,’ which was complemented by the couplets that were copied out in [the] booklet. Richard Day was the son of the master printer John Day, who produced Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. The second edition of 1578 replaced continental prayers with material by Knox, Foxe, and Calvin, and included prayers for Elizabeth” (Priaulx Library). The title page appears within a broad woodcut border showing the Tree of Jesse and the pages contains ornate, religious woodcut borders based upon works by Albrecht Dürer and Hans Holbein, illustrating the life of Christ, virtue, sin, the five senses and, finally, the Dance of Death. They provide a veritable catalogue of Christian iconography. One fine example can be seen in the woodcuts on Q2r-v, depicting multiple scenes of men and women separated at death by good and evil angels. “Good angels had traditionally been considered guides for human souls, where evil angels would drag the condemned to everlasting torture” (David Jonathan Davis). This edition appeared after Richard had given up printing altogether, but continued to maintain the patents to both his and his father’s earlier publications. Queen Elizabeth is mentioned by name on G2v and I1r. Richard Yardley’s printer’s device on final leaf. STC 6431. The Ashburnham copy, with shelf mark, verified by Sotheby’s in 1936 as having been purchased by “Tregaskis” at the May 9, 1898 sale of the Earl of Ashburnham’s library (Lot 3004). Description from 1936 laid in. The 3rd Lord Ashburnham, along with his son, built one of the great English libraries, which was sold in the late 19th century, many of the volumes going to the British Library. An 1898 description of the sale of part of the collection details the significant editions of the Book of Common Prayer and English primers that were included. Bookplate.

Title page and conjugate mounted on a stub, faint dampstain to fore-edge margin of first gathering, light embrowning to last gathering, minor rubbing to extremities of early morocco. A near-fine copy.